


our tomb sings of lost melodies, our deaths make others mourn beauty

by Tripping_Upon_the_Stars



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, F/M, Fluff, Ghost Akamatsu Kaede, Ghost Saihara Shuichi, Graphic description of poisoning, I am very sorry, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, Kaede is a princess, Shuichi is a prince, but only sprinkles of it, for consolation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:13:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29625465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tripping_Upon_the_Stars/pseuds/Tripping_Upon_the_Stars
Summary: Nobles were known for their flashy, lavish lifestyle and their cold, bitter deaths mixed from betrayal and envy.Except for Prince Shuichi Saihara and Princess Kaede Akamatsu, who were known for their golden hearts and promising youth. Their corpses had reaped tragedy before they could've even been married.
Relationships: Akamatsu Kaede/Saihara Shuichi
Kudos: 16





	our tomb sings of lost melodies, our deaths make others mourn beauty

**Author's Note:**

> SAIMATSU ANGST SAIMATSU ANGST SAIMATSU ANGST-
> 
> GUESS WHO GOT INSPIRED AND BEGAN WRITING THIS FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK!! I DID!!!
> 
> I genuinely don't know how to write angst so this is more or less practice for me. Shdhsndj Idk how OOC Shuichi or Kaede seems in this but I hope it isn't like... really OOC.
> 
> I do like this concept so I hope I executed it nicely! Please enjoy this fic!

When morning rises, its warmth washes over Kaede’s tongue in the same bitterness she has easily come to know. 

Despite how determinedly she used to push the importance of truth onto others, she had recognized long ago - therefore long after her life - that she had bitten off more than she could chew whenever her righteous words left her mouth. False salvation. 

No matter how much she skirts around the topic, it didn’t change the fact that she had died years ago. 

Her soul has lingered during the days royalty still danced in ballrooms - with noble ladies adorned in large poofy gowns caged around their hips as they strain their arms out to the noblemen, who hold their hands and give them the time of day to make the heavy jewelry and tightened corsets hurt a little less. The older aristocrats would laugh as they sipped wine aged longer than them and then tell their children to make allies, not friends. 

Kaede was one of those children - a crown princess, in fact. She was the treasure of her kingdom with her blonde hair and pink eyes. Her smiling lips that spelled glowing futures out to them like she was an angel sent down from heaven itself. She didn’t lie, no. She was just much too early.

That was the conclusion she solemnly met while she was dying. 

Sprawled out in the middle of the hallway, Kaede’s body was quivering like an active volcano as her insides boiled through intestines like molten lava. The saliva furiously dripping out her mouth was unsightly but paled in comparison to the pain of her limbs dying out as she feels her voice fade. It was unbearable. Life was flashing before her eyes and she hated how her own death felt like a mockery.

She hated how her suffering entailed not just her own, but her lover’s. 

Shuichi had laid there in her convulsing arms, shallowly breathing through his thick sobs and overflowing tears. His gasps lit fire after fire inside Kaede, setting off bombs of emotional pain to go alongside the actual. 

The soft murmurs of _no no no no Kaede please don’t cry it’s not your fault - I’m sorry - I can’t save you - it should’ve been me - this shouldn’t have happened - please don’t die - I’m sorry - I should’ve done something - I’m sorry - I’m sorry - I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry -_

She tried to shake her head, violently coughing as tears steadily streamed down her cheeks. Why should Shuichi be sorry when all she could have ever wanted was for him to be with her? Granted, she wished he wasn’t dying _with_ her but she’d say anything to make their ends less painful for the both of him.

She wished she had comforted him a bit better, but her arms were limply locked around him so she held him instead of wiping his tears away. Her voice was gone so she had nothing sweet to say, but the words that she had so desperately wanted to say had continuously left him instead.

_I’m sorry._

Kaede had tilted her head to the side as she stared up into the bright lights of the dangling chandelier, Shuichi’s head on her stomach and her arms twitching on top of his back. 

Through the pain, all she could think was wanting to apologize to Shuichi for dying so carelessly and selfishly.

For worrying him so much that he ended up following her and got murdered too. 

For not being able to do anything but twitch and cough as he desperately asked her to not close her eyes - but she was tired, and she knew he was too. Despite that, Kaede kept her eyes open long enough to finally feel Shuichi go limp as she blinked through never-ending tears.

She remembered him telling her a tale his uncle told him about, how quickly people die from blood loss when not treated immediately.

Hemlock takes its time though. So she was left to lie there alone, mourning her dead lover before the poison finally took her as various nobles and knights flooded into the hallway, much too late.

Kaede tries not to remember it too much even when all it does it slightly dampen her mood in the present. The somber ending to what was supposed to be her happiest beginning started to slowly lose its violently grievous tone as months and years had passed. Now, it’s just faint melancholy compared to when it used to feel like a melody that had ended too soon, soft in its valley-like slopes and cut off into a jagged cliff.

The past was beautiful. She would’ve loved to look through it had she died a death just as elegant, sifting through memories without an ounce of regret.

Still, Kaede found it hard to reject reality when her body became corporeal and found herself being pulled into a tight hug by Shuichi - whose princely attire was stained with blood and rumpled beyond its supposed grace. The prospect of death - while at the time as unbearably painful as her death - was eased into her mind when she was gently assured that she wasn’t alone.

She had found herself leaving fleeting, teary kisses over his face as he tightly held her hands, sobbing just as much as she was. 

They had whispered so many lines of their relief that they almost forgot that an eternity in their new present had locked them away from a better future.

There’s something melancholic in the way Shuichi finds both himself and Kaede tethered to a not-quite-reality. 

Yes, he could smooth his hands across the translucent fairness of her cheeks and feel her skin. And he could still kiss her soft lips and faintly taste the hemlock that was dripped into her drink. Their hands could still intertwine with one another and they could still hold each other close through the supposedly ‘cold’ nights just as if hypothermia could still lash out and bite their skin black and blue. 

Shuichi stares off into the distance often, lingering by shattered windows and colored glass to look out onto the empty town. Trees are sprinkled around, skirting through the rubble and scattered wood of what used to be a kingdom.

Shuichi misses seeing Kaede’s eyes and how they used to sparkle for something bigger than themselves. The glimmering hope had died, but her spirit is still alive. It’s just that instead of fighting for the future, it has settled into something more mundane.

He can’t blame her - and he wouldn’t. His bludgeoned head couldn’t even think of yelling or putting Kaede at fault. He can’t curse her honest eyes and unaware smile. He knew her hands were far too soft to throw the vase that shattered against his head. When he was dying, she was crying the hardest as she wordlessly comforted him through gritted teeth and burning pain.

They were so young at the time. Eighteen. If they had lived that day, they would’ve died years ago and wouldn’t know the pain of yearning for something that’s just _there_ but slowly inching away the closer they got.

Shuichi’s thoughts are consumed by unsaid apologies as he sits on the floor of a ballroom, playing with Kaede’s hair with one hand while the other is gently intertwined with hers.

Bittersweet. That’s how Shuichi would describe all of this. 

He feels like an onlooker watching through a shattered mosaic. It’s like saying the same word over and over until it didn’t sound like a word anymore and instead a fuzzy mash of syllables speeding down a highway in some kind of delirious sleepiness. Like experiencing a kind of nostalgia that makes it seem like the corporeal form he has is merely something he’s borrowing. He doesn’t like how his entire self feels like it doesn’t belong to him.

And then Kaede gently pokes his chest, snapping him out of his introspection and looking down at her in confusion. She tells him about his sad, droopy eyes and asks him if he’s okay. Shuichi tells her he’s better. Kaede knows it’s something in between a lie and a truth - he just sees it in the tired fondness of her smile, the familiarity in her eyes - and proceeds to carry his jittering mind to a calmer topic. 

Whenever he and Kaede talk, they talk for hours. After all, there was no more breakfast, lunch, or dinner to worry about. No tutoring to distract them from each other. No royal duties unlatching their hands and sending them away. 

Sometimes it’s about their friends.

_“Do you think Momota-kun and Harukawa-san finally got together?”_

_“Maybe! I sure hope so at least because the last time I saw them, Momota-kun seemed really nervous.”_

_“Ah, really? Maybe we should give them more credit, I don’t think even they could hold out for so long.”_

_“What’s wrong, Shuichi?”_

_“I-it’s nothing important. I just finally understood what Ouma-kun meant when he told me to um… well, it’s really nothing…!”_

_“It’s alright! Ouma-kun’s quite confusing, isn’t he? Though - I think it’s pretty funny it took you this long-!”_

_“K-Kaede!”_

_“I’m kidding, I’m kidding!”_

Sometimes it’s about their family.

_“Do you think your parents know?”_

_“Well… it would be a bit awkward if they hadn’t known their own son died.”_

_“Huh?”_

_“What…?”_

_“Oh-! Sorry sorry, haha! I meant that… that you like both?”_

_“Oh.”_

_“My parents know that I do sooo…”_

_“Well, mine do too but they more or less used it to find me more suitors and… Actually, it’s pretty odd we’re only talking about this now, isn’t it?”_

_“Pft - it pretty much is. But! I’d love to get to know you over and over again anyways, Shuichi.”_

_“O-oh. I… I would love to get to know you too, Kaede. Ah, it sounds so odd when I say it…”_

Most days, they’d talk about each other.

_“It’s alright, you know.”_

_“What is? I don’t... I wish our fates were different. I wish I was able to save you because then maybe - just possibly - we’d be happy. But we aren’t.”_

_“But I am happy, Shuichi. I’m more happier now than I ever will be because we’re here together. I’m not - we’re not alone!”_

_“That… that sounds like a lie.”_

_“Oh please, I’m not Ouma-kun. And besides… it’s the truth. Why bother with the future when we’re here together now? We can dance all we want and you never have to worry about other people staring at you as you step on my toes!-“_

_“A-ah but - but why would you want to spend an eternity with me…?”_

_“Really, Shuichi? I was - and technically still am - engaged to you, wasn’t I? Of course I’d be willing to spend eternity with my fiancé! You’re here with me. In this kind of situation, it’s everything I could ever ask for.”_

Somehow, they always found something to talk about while they gazed into each other’s eyes. Two different conversations would be happening at the same time and they wouldn’t have trouble flitting between them both.

Most of the time, Kaede would pause in her speech and lift her head - or pick up Shuichi’s - and guide him to the center of the ballroom where an old grand piano stood on its rickety legs.

Kaede had always stood behind Shuichi in the past as she taught him which keys made which sound, her voice melodic and gentle as she guided him. When it comes to things like piano however, Shuichi found out that Kaede _did_ in fact have a scarily strict side to her that he hadn’t known about at the time. But still, he dubbed her admirable for her passion.

Now, he sits next to her and they’re both able place their fingers against the sunken, yellowing keys. Kaede decides what song they’ll play for the day, and they resume in their discussion as their hands drip down onto the row of keys in familiar unison.

Bugs skitter in and out of the holes of the piano, wrapping the old wood in ant trails and flying ladybugs. They phase through Shuichi and Kaede’s hands as the two watch in silence, filling the air with Clair de Lune. Shuichi’s frown is calm, at ease as he gently leans his head against Kaede’s.

He finds something strangely mundane about their resignation to eternity.

**Author's Note:**

> Shuichi's POV was the hardest to write ngl like the whole time it didn't... feel like him??? I mean that was the goal but I feel like I missed it by a couple of inches.
> 
> Kaede and Shuichi now haunt Shuichi's palace which is now desolate and broken because time really do be like that 😔. They both play the piano to fill the noise of their eternal loneliness because they can't pass on aCk
> 
> Uh, kudos and comments are appreciated!! Like, very. I'd be pretty glad if you guys liked it because I do still think this fic's neato! If I made any mistakes, please tell me sjdndjjej


End file.
